Latest ridiculous Coons smear ties him to "black liberation theology" through group led by Desmond Tutu

It's more than a month until Election Day, but it seems conservatives are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for baseless attacks on Democratic Delaware Senate candidate Chris Coons.

First up is Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator. Lord -- who we last saw trying to parse whether Shirley Sherrod was "lying" about a relative being lynched because only two people were involved in the act, a position so ridiculous that even his fellow Spectator writers wouldn't back him up -- attacked Coons' work as a college student with the South African Council of Churches. Why? Because Coons was "emerging as a leftist," and thus "decided he had some sort of obvious attraction to the work of SACC," which "support[ed] Black Liberation Theology." Things get tangential from here, as Lord plays Six Degrees of Black Liberation Theology (with a brief stop at Rev. Jeremiah Wright) to depict the SACC has having "pro-Marxist, pro-socialist, anti-capitalist views." Lord proclaimed, "Now, the liberation theology chickens that Chris Coons was supporting in Africa have come home to roost in America."

Lord overlooks a few things. Like: What is the one thing people think of when they think of South Africa in the 1980s? Apartheid. And what was one of the leading groups fighting apartheid in that country? The South African Council of Churches. Bishop Desmond Tutu, a prominent anti-apartheid leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is a former secretary-general of SACC, and Nelson Mandela praised the group as being among those who "resisted racial bigotry and held out a vision of a different, transformed South Africa."

Isn't it more logical that Coons was attracted to working for the SACC over its anti-apartheid stance? Yep. Does Lord make that connection? Nope -- he's too invested in his convoluted conspiracy theory.

Speaking of people who love conspiracy theories, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein repeated Lord's claims in his own attack on Coons in an article that led with this stunning revelation, under the headline "Christine O'Donnell's opponent has another Marxist tie":

The Democrat running against Christine O'Donnell for the U.S. Senate seat from Delaware voluntarily audited a class with Marxist activist Cornel West, WND has learned.

Chris Coons once described how his experience with West helped him to realize he "strongly needed and wanted some grounding in traditions and doctrines of my own faith."

Yes, Klein is portraying Coons' attendance at a class taught by West (a longtime Klein target) as evidence of his "Marxist ties."

Does Klein really think that every student of a given professor is a sympathizer of that professor's political views? Apparently so. We somehow suspect that conservative students have taken classes from West at Princeton.

Klein also falsely claimed that Coons "describe[ed] himself as a 'bearded Marxist' " and attempts to demote West by calling him a "race relations instructor." In fact, he carries the title of professor.

Klein, by the way, has a long history of spinning conspiratorial tales and getting the facts wrong.

So it seems this is what conservatives are down to -- B-team pundits making ludicrous attacks.